Guangze Rice Noodle Soup 光泽泡粉

How it is made

Everything in the bowl is local, and the noodles are made from rice alone, with no alum or other additives. Rice is soaked in cold water for two to three hours, drained, ground by machine into a wet paste and cut into blocks two to three cun long. After ten minutes in a steamer the blocks go through a press that forms round strands, and two people pull the strands apart into long threads as they come out, thick or thin as wanted. The rice and the consistency of the wet paste need care: an inexperienced maker ends up with noodles that lack chew or are too hard. Family workshops make them and deliver them fresh to the snack shops every day on converted motorcycle carts.

The flavour lies in the broth. Large bones are simmered into stock in a large clay pot. Strips of fresh lean local pork are marinated for an hour with soy sauce, salt and a little MSG, coated in sweet-potato starch and put into the stock with dried shiitake and dried chilli, then cooked over a low flame for another hour.

The noodles are boiled soft in advance, rinsed in cold water until the water runs clear and wound by hand into small nests of about ten strands, which wait on bamboo sieves. When a customer comes in, a nest goes into boiling water for a minute or two, then into a large bowl with the broth, chopped spring onion and a few blanched greens.

How it is eaten

Lean pork is the standard version; shops also make the soup with large or small intestine, beef offal, pork liver or vegetables. Every shop that serves it keeps garlic paste, stir-fried preserved mustard tuber (榨菜) and stir-fried pickled greens on the table, and diners add them to taste.

Where it comes from

In northern Fujian the noodle snack people think of first is Jian'ou's soy-milk rice noodles (建瓯豆浆粉), but a feature on the Guangze County government site holds that for Guangze people no breakfast snack matches Guangze Rice Noodle Soup. Most snack shops in the county town are built around it, many families eat it as their breakfast out year after year, and people returning from study or work elsewhere head for a bowl first.